Apple iPhone

[fry]

^^ Just to clarify your point a bit. iTunes doesn't have anything to do with AT&T, nor do you need an account with AT&T in order to use iTunes. It is the iPhone that requires an AT&T subscription, not iTunes.

 

And yes, you can decline any updates and still sync data between iTunes and the iPhone as usual. If you've managed to successfully unlock an iPhone, you can use it on any carrier's SIM card and still be able to sync data. I made the mistake of upgrading from 1.0.2 (older but stable firmware) to 1.1.1 (current version, real buggy!) and now my Safari can't survive 10 minutes without crashing!

 

HowardForums has an entire section dedicated to unlocking and hacking. I suggest reading up on it. Goodluck!

http://www.howardforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=368

[2001sg]

Thanks for that info..

 

Kasi from what i know, the latest version of iTunes requires an account with AT&T to activate and sync the iPhone

 

Does unlocking the iphone also bypass this procedure? ..

 

If unlocking the iPhone only means that i can use my current GSM SIM but can't use it to sync with iTunes, parang wala ring kwenta di ba

 

.. Any feedbacks from any iPhone users out there?

Fry is correct. I've been using globe lately but haven't tried smart until just today. no problem. iTunes is same, just sync away. So, i'll take Fry's advise and just decline the firmware updates.

[fry]

Yup. Updating an unlocked and jailbreaked device will cause a re-lock.

 

Whether locked or unlocked, I think everyone should just avoid the 1.1.1 update altogether. My Safari browser crashes often rendering it basically useless. I'm hoping that the next firmware upgrade fixes that issue.

 

Good news though is that Apple has finally announced an SDK for the iPhone due this February!

[boomouse]

Bwahahaha! I told you guys to wait instead of spending all that time hemming and hawing about iPhone unlocking.

 

Orange, the French mobile phone company has announced that together with iPhones sim-locked to their network, they will be selling unlocked iPhones apparently with the approval of Apple. The unlocked versions will cost more of course but thats okay. These things have a way of dropping in price quickly.

 

Still, I think it best to wait for the next version.

[fry]

Typically, carriers offer subsidized pricing for phones phones which are locked to them. They'll sell you a phone for a deep discount (or even free in some cases) in exchange that you'll subscribe to their service for two years or so. The iPhone is an exception, it's locked and its price tag (or part of it at least) isn't even subsidized by AT&T! The French were right to demand that Apple sell unlocked iPhones, but I don't see why they sell them there at a comparatively higher price. The rate they charge in the US is already unsubsidized, how they can sell it for an even higher price baffles me.

Edited October 18, 2007 by fry

[artvader]

Why would it baffle you? It's Apple.

[Gideon]

Pwede na pala ang 3rd party software sa Iphone, Apple really made some adjustments here.

[fry]

Just an update, simply restarting the phone seemed to have sorted out a lot of the instability problems, it's already been an hour since it last crashed! Still keeping my fingers crossed though.

[boomouse]

Typically, carriers offer subsidized pricing for phones phones which are locked to them. They'll sell you a phone for a deep discount (or even free in some cases) in exchange that you'll subscribe to their service for two years or so. The iPhone is an exception, it's locked and its price tag (or part of it at least) isn't even subsidized by AT&T! The French were right to demand that Apple sell unlocked iPhones, but I don't see why they sell them there at a comparatively higher price. The rate they charge in the US is already unsubsidized, how they can sell it for an even higher price baffles me.

 

Apple is the only phone maker I know that gets a kickback from AT&T every time you do something billable. And Apple can get away with it because the market lets it get away with it. You have to have a really good product and good product image to pull that through.

 

Apple bashers out there will just have to moan, groan and whimper with the fact that they either don't have the money to go Apple or not enugh appreciation of the value of their time to go putzing around with Windows and Nokia/Sony Ericsson.

[LadyChatterley]

I got my iphone this September from the Apple store in New York for $399 (+tax) and had it hacked here for network compatibility for less than P3,000. With the peso-dollar rate upon purchase, that's about P23,000 only. My nokia N series is more expensive, it turns out.

 

In the law of economics, I can understand why traders are selling them here for a higher price, and some will actually bite into the temptation of being among the first to own one, regardless of the cost. But having the phone now for a month, I would recommend that you hold on to your quand and wait for the official release that will be compatible to the region (Asia), for the following reasons:

 

1. It's features are not worth P28,000 or more (the usual selling price of iphone dealers.) Comparing it to a Nokia, or other high-end phones in the market now, the iphone has no bluetooth device. It has no group sending (which I need badly for disseminating info to my staff.) And it doesn't have an FM radio, unlike some mobile phones today. If that will do for you, then get it for the price its worth. Wait.

 

2. Hacking the phone limits its functionality. You can't enjoy the full features which come with upgrading because it will automatically revert to its at&t mode, rendering it useless under our local networks. (I plan to do just that when I return to the US and insert my at&t sim.) To enjoy it, wait.

 

3. Some SE or Nokia phones are so much better. If you get it now and decide to sell it later on to go back to the "real" phones, you'll be competing with the brand new units which will most likely sell at the price you will be putting it up for. You definitely lose.

 

I am keeping my iphone simply because I already bought it and I can use it in the states, and I wouldn't want to shortchange any body who will be inherting it from me. And I'm keeping my N73, thank you.

[fry]

^^ Though you are right for the most part, the iPhone does have BT support! There's even an official BT headset that Apple is selling. What it doesn't have though is A2DP (Stereo BT). Also, an unlocked iPhone doesn't "re-lock" by itself! You now could enjoy unsigned 3rd party support while at the same time benefit from the latest firmware as there are already jailbreak and unlock hacks available for 1.1.1

 

But you are right, as it stands now, the iPhone isn't "all that". If I could go back in time, I wouldn't have bought an iPhone and kept my Sidekick ID instead. But the promise of more things to come soon is enough to convince me to stick around. I think Apple has just barely started to really fully maximize the true potential of the iPhone. SDKs will be available early next year, and we should see licensed 3rd party apps soon afterwards.

[boomouse]

I got my iphone this September from the Apple store in New York for $399 (+tax) and had it hacked here for network compatibility for less than P3,000. With the peso-dollar rate upon purchase, that's about P23,000 only. My nokia N series is more expensive, it turns out.

 

In the law of economics, I can understand why traders are selling them here for a higher price, and some will actually bite into the temptation of being among the first to own one, regardless of the cost. But having the phone now for a month, I would recommend that you hold on to your quand and wait for the official release that will be compatible to the region (Asia), for the following reasons:

 

1. It's features are not worth P28,000 or more (the usual selling price of iphone dealers.) Comparing it to a Nokia, or other high-end phones in the market now, the iphone has no bluetooth device. It has no group sending (which I need badly for disseminating info to my staff.) And it doesn't have an FM radio, unlike some mobile phones today. If that will do for you, then get it for the price its worth. Wait.

 

2. Hacking the phone limits its functionality. You can't enjoy the full features which come with upgrading because it will automatically revert to its at&t mode, rendering it useless under our local networks. (I plan to do just that when I return to the US and insert my at&t sim.) To enjoy it, wait.

 

3. Some SE or Nokia phones are so much better. If you get it now and decide to sell it later on to go back to the "real" phones, you'll be competing with the brand new units which will most likely sell at the price you will be putting it up for. You definitely lose.

 

I am keeping my iphone simply because I already bought it and I can use it in the states, and I wouldn't want to shortchange any body who will be inherting it from me. And I'm keeping my N73, thank you.

 

I've said it in this thread before. Well, not in so many words, but to look at something like the iPhone in the same way that we are used to looking at other phones, and cars, and everything else that we buy would be shortchanging ourselves. If you just sit and compare specs between the phone and the 'others' you don't really get down to the things that matter which is:

 

1. How productive it makes you

2. How efficient a communciator it makes you--when taken in combination with using a computer

3. How 'cool' it makes you look.

4. How gratifying it feels to be owning one especially with the caché that the Apple and ipgone brand currently carry irrespective of the deprecations of those who think that you've fallen for Apple's and Steve Jobs' hype rather than Bill Gates' 'sense'.

 

Unless you do this, it would be comparing car specs before you buy a car not knowing that in all focus groups conducted in this country about potential car ownership a primary unspoken consideration is "how nice one perceives him/her self looks while driving or riding a car."

 

But now, the same people who decide who the single most influential human being each year is in their "Man of the Year" issue has declared the iPhone the invention of the year. Now I raise this not to highlight the virtues of the iphone which are obvious but to put forward how this product is viewed and deconstructed. A meta opinion if you will of the device. Read it here:

 

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/art...e-inline-bottom

 

 

Invention of the Year: the iPhone

by Lev Grossman

 

Stop. I mean, don't stop reading this, but stop thinking what you're about to think. Or, O.K., I'll think it for you: The thing is hard to type on. It's too slow. It's too big. It doesn't have instant messaging. It's too expensive. (Or, no, wait, it's too cheap!) It doesn't support my work e-mail. It's locked to AT&T. Steve Jobs secretly hates puppies. And—all together now—we're sick of hearing about it! Yes, there's been a lot of hype written about the iPhone, and a lot of guff too. So much so that it seems weird to add more, after Danny Fanboy and Bobby McBlogger have had their day. But when that day is over, Apple's iPhone is still the best thing invented this year. Why? Five reasons:

 

1. The iPhone is pretty

Most high-tech companies don't take design seriously. They treat it as an afterthought. Window-dressing. But one of Jobs' basic insights about technology is that good design is actually as important as good technology. All the cool features in the world won't do you any good unless you can figure out how to use said features, and feel smart and attractive while doing it.

 

An example: look at what happens when you put the iPhone into "airplane" mode (i.e., no cell service, WiFi, etc.). A tiny little orange airplane zooms into the menu bar! Cute, you might say. But cute little touches like that are part of what makes the iPhone usable in a world of useless gadgets. It speaks your language. In the world of technology, surface really is depth.

 

2. It's touchy-feely

apple didn't invent the touchscreen. Apple didn't even reinvent it (Apple probably acquired its much hyped multitouch technology when it snapped up a company called Fingerworks in 2005). But Apple knew what to do with it. Apple's engineers used the touchscreen to innovate past the graphical user interface (which Apple helped pioneer with the Macintosh in the 1980s) to create a whole new kind of interface, a tactile one that gives users the illusion of actually physically manipulating data with their hands—flipping through album covers, clicking links, stretching and shrinking photographs with their fingers.

 

This is, as engineers say, nontrivial. It's part of a new way of relating to computers. Look at the success of the Nintendo Wii. Look at Microsoft's new Surface Computing division. Look at how Apple has propagated its touchscreen interface to the iPod line with the iPod Touch. Can it be long before we get an iMac Touch? A TouchBook? Touching is the new seeing.

 

3. It will make other phones better

jobs didn't write the code inside the iPhone. These days he doesn't dirty his fingers with 1's and 0's, if he ever really did. But he did negotiate the deal with AT&T to carry the iPhone. That's important: one reason so many cell phones are lame is that cell-phone-service providers hobble developers with lame rules about what they can and can't do. AT&T gave Apple unprecedented freedom to build the iPhone to its own specifications. Now other phone makers are jealous. They're demanding the same freedoms. That means better, more innovative phones for all.

 

4. It's not a phone, it's a platform

when apple made the iphone, it didn't throw together some cheap-o bare-bones firmware. It took OS X, its full-featured desktop operating system, and somehow squished it down to fit inside the iPhone's elegant glass-and-stainless-steel case. That makes the iPhone more than just a gadget. It's a genuine handheld, walk-around computer, the first device that really deserves the name. One of the big trends of 2007 was the idea that computing doesn't belong just in cyberspace, it needs to happen here, in the real world, where actual stuff happens. The iPhone gets applications like Google Maps out onto the street, where we really need them.

 

And this is just the beginning. Platforms are for building on. Last month, after a lot of throat-clearing, Apple decided to open up the iPhone, so that you—meaning people other than Apple employees—will be able to develop software for it too. Ever notice all that black blank space on the iPhone's desktop? It's about to fill up with lots of tiny, pretty, useful icons.

 

5. It is but the ghost of iPhones yet to come

the iphone has sold enough units—more than 1.4 million at press time—that it'll be around for a while, and with all that room to develop and its infinitely updatable, all-software interface, the iPhone is built to evolve. Look at the iPod of six years ago. That monochrome interface! That clunky touchwheel! It looks like something a caveman whittled from a piece of flint using another piece of flint. Now imagine something that's going to make the iPhone look that primitive. You'll have one in a few years. It'll be very cool. And it'll be even cheaper.

Edited November 5, 2007 by boomouse

[fry]

...you don't really get down to the things that matter which is:

 

1. How productive it makes you

2. How efficient a communciator it makes you--when taken in combination with using a computer

3. How 'cool' it makes you look.

4. How gratifying it feels to be owning one especially with the caché that the Apple and ipgone brand currently carry irrespective of the deprecations of those who think that you've fallen for Apple's and Steve Jobs' hype rather than Bill Gates' 'sense'.

 

An a person who owns an iPhone, I can tell you right now that none of those things you've mentioned are true.

 

1. It does SQUAT! It's an iPod touch with sub-par phone features.

2. It hardly syncs data correctly, not in the manner you expect.

3. Highly subjective, the only difference I now feel is that of "Gee, I hope I won't drop my phone". It's one slippery mofo.

4. Apple is now the new douche bag brand.

[fry]

Typo: That should be, "As a person..."

[kLique]

advisable na ba to buy an IPhone?

I've been wanting to get one but people have been discouraging me

the problem they say is there could be potential problems

and since I can't upgrade my software... I may have a hard time dealing with it